


Meanwhile

by Ghastjio



Series: T.A.G. Universe [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: (or at least planned ones), Gen, I'm tagging specific characters as they get pov chapters, Major Character Death warning 'cause some of them might talk about how they died in the past
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2020-11-28 12:02:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20966234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghastjio/pseuds/Ghastjio
Summary: They won the game. Or at least, some of them did. The door changed at the last second and stole them away from their hard-earned reward. Six gods were sent to earth. The others were sent somewhere else. Where are they? How do they leave? What's lurking in the shadows? Only time (and maybe 11 other aspects) will answer their questions.Meanwhile is a companion work to The Alternate Game and is meant to be read at the same time. It's a separate work now due to just how many plans I have for it.





	1. A Light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previous chapter - [Introductions and Conversations Pt. 2](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17784692/chapters/43672607).
> 
> Fun fact: It originally posted on 4/13 at 4:13 pm

A dark fog permeates the air. Beneath it, there's a sea of small black pebbles. The land is flat and featureless, the fog empty and devoid of life. That is, it's mostly empty. The pebbles shine and reflect a single point of bright, brilliant light. Said light is currently at the end of a wand, and Rose Lalonde is holding it high up in the air.

She's been wandering the featureless place for what feels like hours. She has no idea how much time has actually passed, only that it's imperative that she keep moving. So move she does. The pebbles crunch underfoot and the light like a tiny sun illuminates a small section of the fog around her. All she can smell is dust, all she can taste is ashen fog, all she can hear is the sound of tiny stones sliding against each other, and all she can see is the empty land around her. It almost makes her want to give up her endless wandering.

Almost. Rose thinks back to when she first arrived, sprawled on the stones. She remembers the game and the message that came after, welcoming to her starting tier and the tier she would supposedly support. She's on the Prosperse tier, though what that means, she doesn’t know. Then there was that strange message for the tier she's supposed to be supporting. A 501 error about something not implemented yet. It sounded ominous. It still does

It's made even more ominous by the fact that nobody else has been around since then. At first she called out and hoped that someone was close enough to hear her, but there was no response. Then she checked in with her powers - which still thankfully worked - and came to the conclusion that moving was the best idea. Every time she checked afterwards it still remained as the thing she should do, so here she is hours later and still wandering. Her feet are starting to tire and she has switched her arms too many times to count to keep holding her light aloft. The addition of the light is purely common sense. Her voice might tire, but the light would keep shining as a beacon that would hopefully call her friends. Or at least anyone else.

She keeps walking, one foot after another, and is carried along by a determination to find out what's happening and why she's in this place. If she can only find some other source of life, even if it's as small as an insect. In fact, she's quite honestly looking for something that small, which is why she misses the way the fog seems to reflect her light back at her. It didn't do that before, at least, not to the degree it is now. The reflection becomes brighter as she walks until it finally catches her eye.

It's quickly made apparent that it in’t a reflection at all. It's its own silently pulsing light, though the pulses were too minuscule to notice before. Rose hesitates but lowers her wand and stops providing it with light. Now with the darkness surrounding her, she can easily see the red and blue light before her. It isn’t long before she can make out a slight shape in the fog, short but wiry with psionic energy arcing between four horns.

“Hello,” she calls, and hopes that the person before her is who she thinks it was, “nice day for a walk.”

The person snorts slightly and keeps walking forward. He's more easily visible now and easily identifiable as Sollux Captor, only without the double eye patches he wore when she last saw him. In their place sre a pair of red and blue shades to match the colors of his eyes. “‘Nice’?”

She shrugs. “I heard it’s important to stay positive.”

The troll stops in front of her. His psionics make some of Rose’s hair stand on end. “Says the human.”

She raises an eyebrow and crosses her arms. “I’d love to dig into that comment, I really would. It’s such a shame that literally anything else is more important right now.”

Sollux smirks and shakes his head. “You can’t deny that every human says that.”

“I can. However, I called out the importance of anything else in an attempt to discuss the topics we _should_ be discussing.”

His expression suddenly grows more serious. “Yeah. Did you get the same message I did?”

“Something about being on the Prosperse tier and supporting another tier, though I was presented with a 501 error before I could find out what that other tier was.”

“I got the same thing. Something’s gone wrong.”

“I think you’re right,” says Rose. She glances around at the still featureless landscape around them. “It makes me wonder if this where our supposed tier should be or if it is just a waiting place for when the error is fixed.”

Sollux tilts his head slightly and looks around with her. “Could be either way. But it’s kind of shitty that we and whoever else that might be here were spaced so far apart from each other.”

A thought occurs to Rose. “Do you think that’s on purpose?”

The troll’s eyes narrows slightly in thought. “It has to be,” he muses. “All of us are powerful gods. What better way to bring us down than by splitting us into groups and trying to make sure the groups can’t even meet their own members?”

“I suppose winning the game and not being thrown into another deathly scenario is too much to ask for. Though it would make it much easier if all of us were god tier, not just the humans and one troll.”

Sollux smirks. “Make that _two_ trolls.”

“Two?” she asks. That's interesting. “Did you find a way to go god tier while you were roaming the dream bubbles?”

“No,” he says. “Something even better. I woke up here already god tiered.”

Rose blinks in surprise. “Really? How do you know? You don’t have a god tier outfit on.”

He shrugs and glances around at the fog again. “I might not, but I’m still god tier. I’ve been feeling Doom ever since I woke up and I’ve practiced doing some things while I was looking for people.”

“What kinds of things?”

“Well-” the troll starts, but he suddenly cuts himself off. He's staring at a specific point in the fog, but when Rose follows his gaze, she can't see anything.

“Sollux?”

“We should move,” he says, with an urgency that has her worried. “I don’t think we want to be totally doomed just yet.”

Rose frowns and closes her eyes. A glowing line appears on her forehead, and it opens up into a third eye made of light. The sun-like pupil shines brightest of all as she examines the the most fortunate path ahead of her. Here she can only see actions that should be taken, not their results. Currently only one action is free of the mist that's been clouding her vision since she woke: move.

She opens her real eyes again. Her third eye closes and fades. “You’re right.”

Sollux shakes his head and starts off in the opposite direction of whatever he was staring at before. “Of course I am.”

She follows behind him. She would normally leave the conversation there and let them travel in silence, but something nags her. “How do you know this is the right direction to go in?”

“It’s the one farthest away from our doom. What, do you want to head straight towards it?”

“No, but I can’t help but notice that there are many other options than heading straight away from it.”

The troll side-eyes her. “Do your powers know where to go?”

“They didn’t show me that much. I’m speaking from my own intuition.”

Sollux shakes his head but something disturbs the fog before he can say anything. Both troll and human stop and stare as it moves and becomes slightly uneven in places. It's startling to see a difference in the previously uniform sheet of translucent grey. Then they feel the slight breeze that's agitating the fog and glance at each other. Compared to the stillness beforehand, it's obvious that the breeze isn’t a natural function of the land.

A thought comes to Rose’s mind and she smirks slightly. “I think that might just be John.”

Sollux looks towards where the breeze is coming from - slightly to the left of where they were heading before - and nods. “Looks like we know where we’re going now.”

“We certainly do,” she says as she starts towards it. “Let’s hope it doesn’t take another few hours to find him.”

The troll groans in agreement and follows after her. Red and blue energy still arcs between his horns to light the way. Slowly, step by step, their light recedes into the fog and the land they left behind became dark again. Much later, a darkened serpentine shape moves through the fog. Its long claws dig deep into the endless black pebbles as it pulls itself forward. It stops momentarily where the two gods found each other and it lifts its head - a massive horse skull - to examine something no one else can see. A cloud of ash and dust rises from underneath the skull and, for a moment, its deep green eyes practically shine. Then it turns itself towards where the gods carried on and drags itself forward, inch by inch, to follow them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter - [Meanwhile: An Island](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20966234/chapters/49851107).


	2. An Island

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previous chapter - [Meanwhile: A Light](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20966234/chapters/49850909).
> 
> Surprise: A different style than normal

The day never seems to end. It keeps stretching on and on. She has no idea of knowing if it’s just her sense of time - there’s no clocks, and no sun in the sky to track the movement of. There’s no clouds that could cover it. Just endless, sunless, blue skies. It sets her on edge. She leaps off of a giant lily pad and onto the soft dirt of yet another island. She would’ve swam if it wasn’t for her companion, the only other living thing she’s seen in this world.

Well. That isn’t true. On every island there’s an abundance of plant life, so lush and rich and peaceful that she first thought it was all fake. Living bridges of lily pads connect some of the islands, and for others, giant logs covered in moss and flowers act as bridges instead. She swears their roots make the foundations of the islands. She looks behind her as her companion lands next to her, and with a shared nod, they both venture further onto the island.

It’s bigger than most. Unlike every other island they’ve crossed, they can’t see the opposite shore. Not to mention that the trees actually block out the sky in some places. For some reason this specific island carries a sense of danger - so much so that her fins flare out in warning. She keeps her trident at the ready as she creeps forward. Her companion unsheathes her claws. The shadows lengthen, but darkness doesn’t gather. She has a suspicion that it never will.

Eventually the two of them happen upon a glade and they stop, the sense of danger thick in the air. The source of it lay in the center, bright green eyes wide open and staring at them like it’s waiting for them. She takes a step back towards the shadows, as if they can do anything to hide her, but it’s too late. The creature pulls itself up on its serpentine body to tower above them. A small forest grows on its back, the grass and moss that once spread from it to the ground around it now falling away. Two large horns, like the trunks of massive trees, slope back from its head. Its gaze is unreadable, but from the way it’s winding its body tightly (always upright to keep the trees from touching), it’s ready for something. A fight?

A fight is what Feferi guesses, and she clutches her trident tightly. Next to her Nepeta hisses and crouches down low, but neither of them are truly prepared. This creature was defeated once before, back in a game they never knew the consequences of. Now it’s alive again. Maybe it’s the thing that brought them here. Maybe it wants revenge.

Feferi killed it once, after all. Her luck is bound to run out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter - [Introductions and Conversations Pt. 3](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17784692/chapters/46048396).


	3. A Leviathan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previous chapter - [Intermission: The Guardians](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17784692/chapters/46216537).
> 
> TW for self destructive thoughts in the first three paragraphs of this. Just in case!

Gamzee is very used to saltwater at this point. He remembers going on long journeys to find his lusus, journeys that always ended in the burning of saltwater in his lungs and a crushing disappointment in his heart. After he’d turned to sopor but before he was completely under its effects, he would sometimes try to drown himself. His instincts always made him swim to the surface before it was too late, but there were a couple times he almost didn’t make it.

Now, however, there is no surface to swim to. Part of him wonders if he’ll finally be able to drown. The other part of him knows he won’t. The giant clam next to him lets loose a torrent of bubbles, some big enough for several people to fit inside. Aranea sticks her head into one of the smaller ones, takes a giant gulp of air, then pulls her head back out. Gamzee stares at her for a moment, wondering if she’ll finally let him drown. He gets his answer when she shoves his head into another bubble. He takes a breath of air.

When he finally pulls his head back out, he finds Aranea staring into the distance again. He follows her gaze and finds that Meulin is a lot closer than when he last looked at her. She almost looks like a drowned cat, he thinks. A drowned cat that can’t swim. Because it’s already dead. He floats there for a moment before cracking a small grin. Damn is he jealous of that metaphorical drowned cat.

Meulin finally reaches Aranea. Aranea grabs Gamzee by the wrist and leads them towards another giant clam. It doesn’t take long before it opens and a stream of bubbles pours out of it too. This time, the three of them are caught inside one of the larger bubbles. Everyone takes a moment to gasp for air. Then Aranea turns to Meulin. Gamzee decides he doesn’t want to listen, so he turns to look out of the bubble instead. It’s struggling to stay afloat with the three of them in there, and it even starts sinking slightly.

“What did you find?” Aranea asks.

A pause. “The wall keeps going fur furever. There’s clams as fur as I can see, and nothing else.”

Aranea frowns. “Nothing else?”

Meulin shakes her head and stares out of the bubble. The rocky wall she was following is only a few hundred feet next to them, and the clams continue up it for as far they can see. Considering how clear the water is, that’s a long way up. “Nope.”

Gamzee doesn’t have to look to see the anger on Aranea’s face. They’ve been here in this underwater world for a while, and he knows she’s getting impatient. It’s taken them long enough to find this rock wall. They can’t find the surface no matter how high they swim, and the bottom is yet another mystery. All they know is that there must be clams down there, because the rising bubbles were the only thing keeping them alive until they found the wall. The only sources of life they’ve found are themselves and the aforementioned clams, and now her determination to find anything else is the only thing that keeps them going.

Aranea takes a deep breath like she’s preparing to yell, then seems to think better about it. Gamzee takes a glance back at her and sees a carefully maintained look of encouragement. A quick glance at Meulin tells him that the oliveblood isn’t fooled.

“How about,” Aranea starts, her voice as carefully positive as her expression, “how about we continue on together? In the opposite direction, this time. We’re bound to find something.”

Meulin stares at Aranea for a long time. Gamzee knows she needs time to read lips, but this pause is longer than the ones she’s taken before. “Fine,” she finally says, “let’s do it.”

The smile on Aranea’s face widens into something just a little too victorious. “Let’s.”

Meulin is the first to push herself out of the bubble. Aranea does the same half a second afterwards, and her iron grip on his wrist forces Gamzee to follow suit. Out of the three of them, Gamzee is by far the best swimmer. However, Aranea is forced to take the lead since he practically refuses to swim. He simply floats along behind her and lets her tug him along. Meanwhile Meulin keeps her distance from the both of them.

They stop occasionally to breathe the air from passing bubbles, but they never stay still for long. Eventually their pace starts lagging and Gamzee wonders if that’s because Aranea is getting too tired. Then she pulls them into a bubble, and her thoughtful expression tells Gamzee that it’s something else entirely.

“Did either of you two notice?”

“Notice what?” Meulin asks. From her voice, it isn’t because she’s interested. She’s just trying to humor her companion.

“It’s darker. It wasn’t that bright to begin with, but it’s like we just passed under the shadow of something.”

Meulin asks something else, but Gamzee doesn’t hear it. His attention is suddenly called off to the side, towards the direction they were heading in. He watches distant bubbles rise to the surface and- there! One of them shines for a moment before becoming as dull as it was before. He watches for another minute and it happens again with another bubble, only fainter. He glances back at the other two for a moment and wonders to himself. Then he makes up his mind and pushes himself out of the bubble to take off towards the distance.

It’s been too long since he was able to stretch out and truly swim. He feels a faint rush of happiness; not the dull kind the sopor gave him for all those sweeps. The proper kind. He’s caught off guard by it and falters for a second, but eventually continues forward. Then the happiness leaves as quickly as it came and he tries his best to convince himself that it won’t come back. He doesn’t want to be stuck in another trap of hoping for something that will never come back.

It isn’t long before he reaches the space where the glimmering bubbles were. The water around him is slowly getting gloomy, but he ignores that and looks around. Another shining bubble catches his eye and he quickly swims towards it. It darkens when he gets close and he frowns. Then he chases after another glimmering bubble only to have the same thing happen. He’s starting to get angry and frustrated, so when a hand grasps his shoulder, he snarls and whips around to knock it to the side.

Aranea quickly pulls her hand close and pedals back in shock, her eyes wide. Then they narrow in indignation. Gamzee feels a wave of fear roll through him and he shrinks back, suddenly scared of what she’ll do. He remembers her mind and how it enveloped his, how it took away whatever control he thought he had. He doesn’t want it to happen again. Please, don’t let it happen again. She snarls and he quickly ducks away. Then he realizes he can swim and he takes off.

He swims down as fast as he can. He can practically feel his fear rolling off of him as he dodges bubble after bubble. They would only slow him down. He doesn’t know if Aranea is coming after him, but it certainly feels that way, so he doesn’t dare stop. The water gets harder and harder to see through as he continues down, and the darkness gathers quicker than it naturally would. He glances up to see Aranea tugging Meulin along, only to suddenly feel himself hit something. He quickly turns around only to find a sloping plane of sand below him. He reached the bottom.

Aranea comes to a stop next to him and he shies away, but her gaze isn’t on him. It’s on the sand. She examines it for a second before kicking her legs to approach a giant clam half buried in the sand. She rests her hand in it and it lays dormant for a second before suddenly opening its maw and letting out a torrent of bubbles like the others did. Only this time, a large pearl rests inside. It shines like a small sun, and it’s only then that Gamzee realizes that the glimmering bubbles were only reflecting light.

Aranea breaks him out of that realization by pulling him into a large bubble. He sucks in a breath he didn’t know he was holding and the other two do the same. Then he looks over at Aranea with apprehension, expecting her to snap at him, only to see a genuine grin on her face.

“You found the bottom!”

The excitement in her voice throws him off for a second. Finally he decides to speak his first word after messiahs know how long. “What?”

“You found it!” she repeats, then turns to look at it from inside the bubble. “And it’s interesting. See how it slopes down? It probably goes much deeper from here, explaining why we couldn’t find it where we were before. See those clams? The pearls are bioluminescent, wonderfully so, which means that they must have something to do with catching prey. Guess what prey means? More life! We’re  _ this _ close to finding something or someone else!”

Meulin tilts her head. “But what if their prey is us?” she asks.

“Impossible. We haven’t been here before, so how would they know to eat us?”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

Aranea almost sounds annoyed by the statement. “Then what _did_ you mean?”

“The two things we all have in common are that we all played the game, and the game left us all behind. What if they prey on players like us? Players that were left behind?”

Aranea hesitates, then frowns. “If that’s the case, there must be a lot of players like that.”

Gamzee, who was watching the other clams reveal their shining pearls around him, finally speaks up again. “The game’s been going for a long time.”

The other two pause when they hear that and glance at each other. Finally, Aranea straightens herself up. “We’ll just have to be careful around them. For now, we should explore. The sand slopes up over there. Maybe that will lead us to a beach.”

Meulin sighs but slips out of the bubble. Aranea does the same, and Gamzee finally follows them out with his own free will. Aranea obviously didn’t expect that, but her surprised expression quickly turns into a smug one. Gamzee tries to ignore it as he starts following the sand uphill. His heart is still hammering from the fear he felt, and right now all he wants to do is pretend Aranea doesn’t exist. However, she makes that pretty difficult when she catches up to him to grab his wrist. He reluctantly turns to face her only to find that she isn’t looking at him. Instead, she’s looking off towards deeper waters, and he follows her gaze.

At this point, the water is too dark and murky to see much of anything other than the glowing pearls inside each clam’s mouth. However, something in the distance catches his eye. Whereas the pearls shine bright and yellow like small suns, small somethings in the distance glow a dull purple. They’re small, like thousands of little stars, and they twist and turn while Gamzee watches. They perform a little dance only to wink out and reappear to go in a different direction. This goes on a couple more times, and each time the stars inch closer. Eventually the light of a distant pearl illuminates the dark underbelly of a giant beast only for the shape to vanish into the gloom again.

That’s when Gamzee realizes what he’s really seeing. The star-like points of bioluminescence wink out as the beast twists and covers them. Then the lights on its other side become visible, and the dance begins again. It passes by another pearl and this time long rows of torn, massive fins on its sides come into view. He watches as the massive thing snakes through the water, the fins moving in tandem to help it change direction. It comes closer to the sand and countless pearls finally illuminate its face. Its eyes shine with dark hunger as it opens its maw. Its rows of teeth are longer and sharper than the stalactites in Alternia’s caverns, but the more terrifying thing is how he can’t see the back of its jaw. As it swims forward and no end comes in sight, he realizes that its mouth must be at least half the size of its enormous body.

Its eyes shine as the light of the pearls reflects off of them, and Gamzee realizes that it’s looking straight at Aranea. He turns to look at her only to find her frozen, her eyes shining with the bioluminescence of the monster in front of her. She doesn’t look away from the thing, but her lips finally move and a few bubbles rise from her lips to disappear into the gloom. It takes Gamzee a second, but then the word clicks in his head. Well fuck.

Cetus really looks like that?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter - [Heroes and Villains Pt. 1](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17784692/chapters/49859957).


	4. A Scream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previous chapter - [Heroes and Villains Pt. 5](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17784692/chapters/56745367).

Cronus doesn’t know where he’s going, only that he wants to put distance between him and the weird  _ thing _ that’s here too. Equius kept dragging him back whenever he tried to leave, saying that they needed to stay close. Then the thing screamed and he screamed too and Cronus figured that hey, he might as well get out of here while everyone else was doing… that. (He may have screamed too, but in fear, not pain. Or whatever else they were feeling.) Equius tried to follow him for a while, but the thing shrieked again and Equius ran back to help. Not that he got there in time.

Cronus has no idea how long he’s been in this place, only that the further he goes, the less and less it seems like he’s actually going anywhere. That’s fine. Yup, totally fine. No sir, he isn’t freaked the fuck out, and his hands definitely aren’t shaking. He doesn’t know why it’s so hard to hold his cigarette, but it’s not because of that. There’s stars shimmering around him, but they do nothing to calm his nerves and he’s almost tempted to actually light the damn thing and see if that helps.

He decides against it, partly because his gills never feel right when he smokes and partly because he can’t seem to find his lighter. That’s okay. He’ll just keep walking. He doesn’t know how long he’ll go for - it’s useless trying to tell time in this place anyway - but keeping his legs moving actually seems to help. You know, he could probably try to make some sort of time system based off of the thing’s screaming. It seems regular enough for that. It’ll probably do the opposite of calm his nerves, but it’s something to do, right?

… Gogdamnit. He sighs and finally slows to a stop. Damnit, this whole place is fucking with his head. The clumps of stars hanging in the air light up when someone (or something) comes close, and they used to be the only thing that let him know he was actually going anywhere. The ground (or lack of it) doesn’t help at all, with its featureless expanse indistinguishable from the void surrounding him, so the stars are truly the only thing he can use to orient himself. The only problem is that he’s pretty sure he passed by the same clump seven times now.

He turns to look behind him, and sure enough, Equius and the thing he’s with are no farther than they were when Cronus first started walking. For a moment he considers rejoining them, but quickly dismisses the thought. He doesn’t want to go near the thing. He remembers when Equius first saw it, when he mumbled “Nix?” under his breath and something along the lines of “she doesn’t look like herself, but I’d recognize that face anywhere”. Funny thing is, it doesn’t even have one. It’s a giant wyvern, might even be as tall as a skyscraper if they were back on Beforus, but its neck cuts off where its head would start and a dark void rests there instead. Cronus guesses he’s thankful for the lack of gore, but still, it’s a pretty creepy sight whenever it swings its “face” around to look at things.

The creep factor may be enough to keep Cronus away, but he’s also bored. Heh, bored and creeped out, what a combination. Still, it gets him to stand and observe for a while. Equius, instead of talking to the thing like he was last time, is sitting cross legged in front of it. He almost looks like he’s meditating. For a moment Cronus swears he can see one of the stars  _ through _ him, but then the thing shudders and lets out a wail. He flinches and quickly covers his earfins as if it’ll do anything to block out the discordant noise, but keeps watching. He was too busy running the first two times, might as well see what happens and  _ then _ run.

The thing brings the clawed tips of its wings to dig at its “face”, the wailing turning to screaming as the claws pull away with some sort of black, sticky substance covering them. Equius stands while it keeps digging like it’s trying to remove something and holds his hands out. Cronus expects the noise to double, if this is what Equius did the first time then it will, but the thing actually starts to quiet down. Replacing the screams, however, is Equius, and that’s somehow worse. He falls to his knees as he starts phasing in and out of- shit, what’s probably reality, his voice ringing clearly through the void. Cronus watches, terrified, as Equius finally collapses, the fall lasting far longer than it should because he keeps blinking out and reappearing in slightly different positions. The thing, its own wails quieted down to whimpers, watches sadly. He has no idea how he knows what it’s feeling and he doesn’t want to think about it.

Even without being able to tell time, Cronus knows this episode was far shorter than the first (he doesn’t think about the second time too hard. That was an outlier, something invisible taking the brunt of it for the thing). The screaming finally stops and Cronus slowly lets his hands drop. He’s shaking harder than ever as he watches Equius keep phasing on the ground, still subject to whatever  _ that _ was but no longer in pain. Holy fuck. He hopes he never has to watch this again.

He quickly turns to start walking again, anything to calm his nerves, but he stops before he can take more than three steps. There, in the distance, a star lights up. Then another. Then a third. He takes a step back and glances behind him. Nope, Equius and the thing are still behind him, so what’s making the stars light up? Actually, he doesn’t want to know, but something still makes him glance back. Now the whole clump is shining, just bright enough to illuminate the thing that’s doing it. There, just under the lowest star, is an amber imp. Cronus just about faints

Instead he does the next best thing: run away screaming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter - [Impossible](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23642524/chapters/56745004).


End file.
